Beautiful
by Bebbe5
Summary: What happened after Hephaistion gave the ring he bought in Egypt to Alexander? I know this has been done before, this is my version following the song 'Beautiful' by Jennifer Paige


N/A: hello everyone. This was the second songfiction I wrote for the Italian fandom of Alexander. The inspiration came from a beautiful video about Alexander and Hephaistion I saw on youtube, (here's the link .com/watch?v=qiTi9MrhHUA ). This shot is part of a series which includes 'Gomenasai' and that I called 'For lovers'.

Hope you like it.

Beautiful

Hephaistion POV

"I wish you to have a heir " I say, my voice is broken while I hold him to me with all my strength. I try to memorize every single moment , every single feeling of this embrace, because I know that, probably, it will be one of the last he will be able to grant me. I sink my face in his hair, don't wanting him to see my tears: he's got married, this is a day of joy for him and I, his… _best__friend_, can't do anything but take part in his happiness.

When I feel that the contact is going to end, I wipe away my tears with the sleeve of the fur I'm wearing then, after having separated from him, I place a hand on his arm and look at him in the eyes. I try to transmit him what I'm feeling, try to tell him something too, but suddenly Roxanne appears and, after having seen us together, she seems to want to destroy me with her eyes.

I bow my head and slowly retire. I try to remain calm, but once the door of their chamber closes behind my shoulders, I start to run. The destination is unimportant, I just want to go away, to put as much distance as possible between me and him.

I can't really understand who I hate more:

him, who keeps on finding new spouses, new lovers, justifying himself with his desire of knowledge, his wish of discovery, which many consider as haughtiness, others madness;

or my own self who, in spite of everything, keeps on following him like any slave. Actually, how can I keep on defining myself his friend, his brother, his….?

Ah, enough, enough, enough. Thoughts, at least for this night, leave my mind, let it rest and restore itself, for the way it will have to face will be long and winding and many times it will risk to lose itself, falling prey of Dionysus, God of insanity, or of some other divinity of ruin.

Without realizing it, I reached the gardens, full of trees, flowers and intoxicating perfumed plant, the scent is so similar to his….

I close my eyelids in order not to let other betraying tears come out and I sit down under one of the shrubs.

I lean on the trunk and sigh, managing, I don't know how, to calm myself down. I don't feel sadness anymore, nor desperation, nor grudge: to tell the truth, I don't feel anything except for melancholy.

The thoughts had listened to my prayers, they've kept away, but memories… I can't claim to send those away.

Like a story painted on a wall, fragments of my youth in Pella run in front of my eyes.

_I__'__m__looking__for__a__way_

_to feel you hold me  
>To feel your heart beat <em>

_just one more time_

Images of when we fought in the sand of the gym, clutched one to the other, with nobody asking any explanation about our friendship that was deeper than usual.

I sigh.

Why can't it be that simple now?

Why do I have to find complicated ways just to hold you, Alexander, why do I have to do it under cover of darkness or in an isolated room?

Why can't I simple put my head on your chest and feel the beat of your heart?

How I wish that the rays of Eos could bless another time a moment like this, just another time.

_I__'__m__reaching__back,__trying__to__touch__the__moment__  
>Each<em>_precious__minute__that__you__were__mine__  
>How<em>_do__you__prepare,__when__you__love__someone__this__way,__  
>To<em>_let__them__go__a__little__more__each__day?_

I close my eyes, as the memories emerge, trying to savour every drop of those times when you were only mine, your ambitions, your projects was still too ephemeral to distract you from me; I, on the other hand, was still so naive hoping that it would have lasted forever.

I throw a fist on the soft grass under me. Aristotle had taught us many things, but he's never prepared us to let the people we love go their way and to accept our place in their life, whatever it is.

These are things one learns on his own skin, with sufferance and words kept concealed into the mind.

I saw you becoming what you are now, my Alexander, I saw you changing a little everyday, but for the love I feel for you, I had decided to let you follow your dreams, sure that you would have never forget me, us.

And yet, this is what have happened.

_The stars we put in place  
>The dreams we didn't waste<br>The sorrows we embraced  
>The world belonged to you and me<br>The oceans that we crossed  
>The innocence we've lost<br>The hurting at the end  
>I go there again,<br>´cause it was beautiful.  
>It was beautiful.<br>_

We've lived many adventures together, from the exile to the military campaigns. We've built a part of history together, followed our dreams, too beautiful for not coming true. There have been sadness and regret, sure, but we've embraced them, certain that they were a necessary part of that world that belonged to us.

We've crossed oceans, both of land and of water, becoming more adult and forgetting of our youth.

And now…. Now there's just pain for me. I'm suffering because today, when you got married, for you it has been just another step of a great adventure. For me, though, it has been the end of what we've started together, many years ago.

That's why I can't do anything but think about our happy and light-hearted years: they're my only source of comfort and this makes me naïvely hope that not everything is over.

Because it was beautiful, too beautiful to end like this.

Alexander POV

Spiced aromas nip my nostrils, one of them certainly belongs to my spouse, who's sound asleep beside me. I turn my gaze away from the ceiling and observe her, scanning her young bronze-like skin, her closed eyes which, I know, are black, her body huddled to mine. Since the first time I saw her dancing, since the moment her deep irises had fixed into mine, I had wished to have her, to make her mine. Finally I managed to do it and yes, I feel satisfied, but I can't be happy. A pair of eyes, far more light than hers, keeps on tormenting me. Until today, I thought that, of the sea, they only had the colour and the depth, but I realized that they also possess its salty and, in a sense, bitter water.

Did he think that I hadn't seen him, that I hadn't felt his body shaking gently in the attempt to hide his sobs?

My heart broke when I saw him like that, even if, I have to confess, my first reaction had been a surprised one. Why was he crying? I can't understand. Surely the reason is related to Roxane and this is exactly what confuses me. I've had other women before, Statira, Barsine, and he had never got upset: what could have happened that made him so troubled, this time?

My ignorance about this scares me. We've been friends and more for a whole life, he shouldn't keep secrets from me.

Paying attention not to raise my wife, I get up from bed, wrap myself in a dressing gown made with crimson silk and go to the window. I scan the night, observe the stars.

What torments you Hephaistion? Why did you shed those tears on my shoulder, through my hair? Why did your embrace gave off desperation? I didn't tell you 'goodbye', I didn't went away.

By Hercules, racking my brain won't solve anything. I'll ask him directly, we'll clear up with each other and everything will be just like before.

I got out of the room and walk towards his rooms. Once there, I knock, but I don't receive any answer. Maybe he's sleeping. I slowly open the door and my eyes open wide: the bed is empty, intact.

Where could he be?

In the harem?

No, he's always despised that place.

The gardens maybe.

Without further hesitation, I head in that direction and, once I'm arrived, I see him sitting under one of the trees, with his eyes staring blankly in front of him.

Hephaistion POV

_Some days missing you is overwhelming  
>When it hits me you're not coming back <em>

Sometimes, when I think back about our happy days, melancholy overwhelms me, clenches my chest. I realize that everything is past, that everything is over, that you won't be what you have been anymore.

What made you change like that? What made you forget what there was between us? Maybe the thirst for this world? Luxury? Inebriation?

What could have more value that what we had built?

_And__in__my__darkest__hours,__I__have__wondered__  
>Was<em>_it__worth__it__for__the__time__we__had?_

_My thoughts get kinda scattered, but one thing I know is true  
>I bless the day that I found you<em>

In the darkest moments, I can't but ask myself if, the time I spent with you had been well spent, if my life would have been better without you.

What on earth am I thinking about? It doesn't matter how much pain I will have to endure, how much anguish will make me suffer and put some 'ifs' to my existence.

Of one thing I'm sure: the day when we met, when we found eachother had been wanted by the gods and, as such, I'll bless him till I will exhale my last breath.

Maybe you'll find new interests to place before me, you'll treat me like the lowest of your private soldiers, but this won't change what we've passed together. I also won't have doubts about the truth of it: the eyes of our companions, always full of envy, will always remember that to me.

I smile, in the end I've found my peace again, as usual.

Now, nothing will upset me for quite some time.

A hand, which wears the rings I bought in Egypt, places itself on my shoulder and the idyll suddenly disappears.

Normal POV

"Finally I found you" Alexander said "I need to talk to you" he added then, sitting by his friend's side.

Hephaistion sighed, as he avoided to meet that two-coloured gaze fixed on him.

Silence fell, disturbed only by the soft rustling of the leaves, caressed by a warm wind.

The king got closer to his general, passing a hand around his shoulders and stopping to watch the horizon in front of them, lightened only but the rays of the moon.

"What wonder we've conquered, haven't we?" he said, his eyes sparkling.

"You said you have something to tell me. So, what is it?" Hephaistion asked, quite curtly.

Alexander turned towards him and noticed that he kept on avoiding his look.

"This." He answered, grabbing his chin and forced him to turn towards him.

"What's wrong?"

Hephaistion lowered his eyes, not even trying to break free from that grip.

"I'm just tired, that's it." He answered, not being able to convince even himself.

"And tiredness makes you cry, my general? I thought I had men of quite different temper in my invincible army." Alexander said, provoking him.

The eyes of Hephaistion immediately looked into his.

'He noticed' they seem to say. It was a moment, then the general moved away from the grip of his king and went back to look the other way.

Alexander sighed: it would have been longer than expected.

"Since our last encounter I've been reflecting and I can't find an explanation for your behaviour. This rather worries me."

"Then forgive me, it was not my intention to give you other things to think about." Hephaistion answered "Right now, You'll have a lot to do with your wife, babies can't be born for their own."

"My only thought is for you, it's so hard to understand this? For the whole night I've kept asking mysel what was tormenting you and now I'm shocked at seeing that you don't want to talk about it with me, with the person who's closest to you."

"Why, you think you're closet o me?" the general coolly asked.

"What?" Alexander was astounded. What on earth was happening to Hephaistion?

The general, as a reply, sighed before talking.

"The fact is that we're not close as we were before, we never meet to talk or to laugh about what has happened during the day. I understand, you've a lot of duties as the king of two kingdoms and, no, don't interrupt me, because you know better than me that, at this rate, Greece and Persia will never be one Kingdom alone." He said when Alexander opened his mouth in order to protest.

"This dream of yours is beautiful, Alexander. I'd like peace to inhabit our world, but our cultures are too different. You can't ask a Greek man to do the προσχūνησις, there's too much pride in his heart and for him, to totally prostrate himself, would be humiliating."

"Is this your opinion too?" the king asked, a little nervous.

"You can't ask me such a thing, because you know well that I wouldn't be sure of my answer. I'd do that for you, but don't forget that I'm a Greek man, a man of Athens and, as such, I couldn't bow the way a slave does. I promised that I would have followed you till the end of the world, but as a friend, not as a slave and I fear that your slowly losing sight of this aspect."

Alexander had no words. This was what all the men that had followed him from Macedonia thought? If somebody else had referred this to him, he surely who have got made, but Hephaistion was Hephaistion, his best friend, his Patroclus and it was sad, more than irritating, hearing him say those words.

"You really think to be a slave for me?" he asked, horrified by his own question and by the answer he may have received.

Hephaistion looked at him.

"Sometimes I thought I was, yes." He answered.

The king paled.

Had he really let that happen? Had he really let that _his_Hephaistion got to think himself to be nothing but a mere slave?

"Why?"

The general, this time, looked at him and said:

"Because I feel like I've been put aside. Because it seems to me that you come to look for me only when you need my diplomatic skills, or my general's skills, or when you don't have a companion for the night. Because when we were in Pella everything was different, this" he continued grabbing the pendant that contained the milk tooth of his king "this seems to have lost its meaning."

"And this?" Alexander asked, putting the ring that he had given him that night in front of his eyes.

"The gesture of a fool hit by a dart of Eros." Hephaistion bitterly answered. "I gave it to you hoping that you would have remembered about us."

"But why now? We've left Egypt many moons ago".

The general didn't answer, so Alexander continued:

"It's because of the marriage, isn't it? Because, even if I had other lovers, women or eunuchs, before I've never married them. Am I right?"

Hephaistion seemed to think a little about it, then nodded as he said:

"Now you'll think that I'm a jealous idiot."

"No, I don't think so at all." The king replied. "If there's an idiot here, that's me."

The head of the general whipped in his direction, his eyes met those of Alexander with a questioning light.

"Don't tell me you haven't thought that" he continued, smiling at seeing the other's cheeks reddening "I suspected it and I can't blame you. I swear, though, that I've never forgotten about us, about the time we've spent together, about the exploits we've achieved and I'm sorry if I gave you that impression."

He sighed before continuing:

_The rules we stepped aside  
>The fear that we defied<br>The thrill of the ride  
>The fire in our hearts that burned<br>_

"Do you remember, when he had fun skipping the lessons of Aristotle and going to take a bath in the lake?"

Hephastion smiled at the thought, as Alexander kept talking:

"And the first time we went on a hunt together and found ourselves face to face with that giant boar? I confess, I was pretty much scared."

"Me too" the general consented "but I was too proud to show it, especially in front of you."

"It was the same for me. We've defeated him together and the terror of the hunt hadn't grazed my heart since then."

Again he put an arm around the shoulders of Hephaistion.

"Everything I see, every action I do remembers me something of us, believe me. When I ride my horse and feel the wind through my hair, I remember our rides in the valleys around Pella. The excitement is exactly the same.

When I see the fire burning in the braziers, your eyes and the light they have before a battle come to my mind. See? I can't not think of you."

"You've never stopped" the general asked.

"No, never, nor even when we've entered in Babylon."

Hephaistion looked at him confused.

Alexander smiled:

"I thought about how beautiful our life would have been from then on. We had conquered a magnificent place, where we could have raised our children, where we could have lived peacefully, where we could have spent a lot of time together and do what we liked the most. If I haven't managed to realize this purpose yet, is because I want my borders to be safe and I wish to reach and see the Indus."

He paused, before continuing:

"I've married that princess not because I fell in love with her, but because the tradition of her people wants so and I need a heir."

"I understand" Hephaistion simply said "sorry if I doubted."

"No, I'm sorry. You're right, I haven't stayed with you the way I should have."

Between the two silence fell, and it was still the wind between the trees of the garden the thing that interrupted it.

Alexander looked his general. Now, his face was peaceful and there weren't tears in his eyes. He decided to make him even happier:

"Do you know what makes you different from a slave?" he asked.

"My rank of general?" the other asked back, in an ironic tone.

"No, Hephaistion, no. Moments like this, moments when we just need to stay near to eachother, in silence, listening to the singing of the night, without asking anything from the other."

When the general moved nearer to him, Alexander had the proof that that his words had obtained the so longed effect.

He kissed _his_Hephaistion in the cheek and hugged him even tighter.

Without saying anything else, the two soon fell asleep with a smile on their lips.

_The oceans that we crossed  
>The innocence we've lost<br>The hurting at the end  
>I go there again,<br>´cause it was beautiful.  
>So beautiful.<br>It was beautiful_

Their affection would have entered in history, the two already suspected it, because it was too unique, too perfect for not being remembered by mankind. Everytime they've tried something new, they've done that together. Joy and pain had fused together creating a singular, wonderful existence.

When Eos rose from the horizon, enlightening the close bodies of the couple, blessing them just like Hephaistion wanted, he couldn't but murmur:

"_Beautiful.__"_

THE END

I sincerely hope you liked it. The song is Beautiful by Jennifer Paige, from the movie 'Autumn in New York'.

For those who may have read this story in Italian, I've added a small scene: the one where Alexander kisses Hephaistion on the cheek. I thought it was a good idea.

Thanks for reading

Bebbe5


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